1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a monitoring system and method, and particularly to a monitoring system and method which allows identification of whether a person is an authorized or non-authorized person using an identification tag that stores identification data used to identify an authorized person.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, various management systems have been developed for monitoring a person who attempts to enter an area needing security and determining whether the person is an authorized or non-authorized person. For example, as disclosed in Patent document 1, a conventional technique has been proposed for capturing the image of a person entering an area needing security by using a video camera, and storing the captured image as image data in a database server. In more detail, this technique is applied to a management system that allows monitoring of persons who enter or exit an area needing security by means of an IC card. In this case, the management system includes an IC card storing identification information used to identify a bearer of the IC card and having wireless communication capability, a reading device wirelessly communicating with the IC card located near the device and reading the identification information stored in the IC card, a verification device comparing the identification information read by the reading device to previously registered information in order to determine whether or not the bearer is an authorized person, a sensor sensing a person in the vicinity of the reading device, a monitoring camera capturing the image of the person in response to the sensor sensing the person, a communication path carrying image data indicative of the image captured by the camera, and a storage device receiving via the communication path the image data indicative of the image captured by the camera when valid identification information has not been read by the reading device and storing the image data as a database associated with corresponding image-capturing time.
The reading device according to the conventional technique reads identification information stored in the IC card wirelessly when the IC card is in the vicinity of the device. Thus, after the identification information read from the bearer's IC card and previously registered information are compared, the bearer of the IC card can be notified of whether the bearer is an authorized or non-authorized person without any particular awareness of the existence of the IC card. Further, the sensor senses the person in the vicinity of the reading device. In response to the sensor sensing the person, the camera captures the image of the person. Note that in this case, the monitoring camera is operated to capture the image of the person only when the reading device fails to verify the validity of the person. This allows the management system to capture the image of a highly suspicious person and store the image as a database, and further prevents the monitoring camera from uselessly operating in order to enable efficient utilization of the capacity of a database memory.
[Patent Document 1]
    Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-167306 (claim 1, paragraph numbers [0009], [0010], [0019])
However, drawbacks to the conventional technique are that a non-authorized person is regarded as an authorized person when the non-authorized person uses an IC card. Therefore, it can be concluded that no reliable system exists for providing appropriate security.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a monitoring system capable of discriminating a non-authorized person from an authorized person even when the non-authorized person behaves as if he/she were an authorized person.
Another object of the invention is to apply such inventive monitoring system to a recently employed system capable of monitoring the behavior of a person.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a monitoring system capable of determining whether a person of interest is an authorized or non-authorized person using an identification tag that stores identification data used to verify an authorized person, in which the identification data stored in the identification tag is verified and in addition, a non-authorized person fraudulently holding the identification tag is discriminated.